At least one counter-protest had already mobilized on Saturday night when demonstrators in Oakland, California blocked a freeway and set off fireworks in response to Charlottesville. …

Tensions reached a boiling point early on when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman. Tragedy struck again when a Virginia state police helicopter responding to the rally crashed seven miles from the riot, killing the two state troopers who were inside. …

President Donald Trump condemned the display of “hatred, bigotry and violence” at the rally, but argued that the blame could be placed on “many sides.” His response was widely criticized for not explicitly denouncing white supremacy or racism.

Anti-racist protesters shared a “beautiful” moment Saturday before terror struck when a car plowed into a massive crowd of people demonstrating against a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. One person died and 19 others were injured in the incident.

By Saturday evening, multiple publications were reporting that suspect James Fields, 20, of Maumee, Ohio, had been arrested in connection with the tragedy.

“James Alex Fields Jr…. is charged with one count of 2nd degree murder, 3 counts of malicious wounding and one count of failing to stop at an accident resulting in a death,” Col. Martin Kumer, the superintendent of Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, told HuffPost in an email. …

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer announced the death on Twitter, hours after the governor declared a state of emergency. Hospital officials confirmed to The Associated Press the number of casualties. Fifteen other injuries related to the rally were reported, the City of Charlottesville said.

The victim who died was a 32-year-old woman, Chief Al Thomas of the Charlottesville Police Department said at a news conference.

Following a morning of clashes, the white supremacists at the rally and counter-protesters began to clear out Saturday afternoon after police threatened arrests. Hundreds of counter-protesters had met together to oppose the white supremacist gathering, marching in solidarity with marginalized groups and chanting “Black Lives Matter!” among other slogans.

“It was an incredible scene,” 23-year-old Thomas Pilnik, who captured the anti-racist counter-demonstration on video, told HuffPost. “It was the most beautiful counter-rally.”

Moments later, a car plowed into the crowd, and bodies went flying.

“It was just terrifying,” said Pilnik, who has lived in Charlottesville for five years and works as an administrator for the University of Virginia’s school of engineering. “I remember people flying into me, telling me to run and get out of the way and watching people fly like they were just bowling pins.”

Pilnik added that it was a “beautiful moment ripped away from us.”

Pilnik believes the driver’s action was deliberate.

“There is nothing in my mind that would ever tell me that this wasn’t an intentional act,” he said. “The way he plowed into the crowd and then reversed at full speed was nothing short of intentional. If he had been scared and made a mistake and rammed the people and hit the back of a car, there’s no way he would have shifted into reverse and slammed on the accelerator to run them over again.”

Video shows the vehicle reverse back at a high rate of speed, running over people who’d just been struck, Pilnik said.

Pilnik said white supremacy is all too real. And it’s time to take it seriously.

“It’s taken me a long time to process, but I think it’s the fact that these [white supremacists] aren’t laughable,” he said. “They aren’t trolls, we actually have domestic terrorism going on and we’ve spent months, if not years, laughing them off. And that just can’t happen, it can’t continue to happen, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but what I’ve seen today just proves to me that it’s not a joke. These terrorists aren’t trolls ― they’re terrorists ― they’re bad people.”

Fields’ mother, Samantha Bloom, told the Toledo Blade on Saturday that her son had told her he was going to Virginia for an “alt-right” rally but didn’t describe it to her in detail. …

The GOP would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism and really meant it.

It was hilarious and telling to see No. 45 Trump tweet that he condemns “all that hate stands for” following the racial-fomented violence by white nationalists in Charlottesville, VA.

The hilarity is that one would have to reach back to presidential candidate George Wallace [in 1968], and maybe toss in GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, to find someone who aspired to sit in the Oval Office who so blatantly, nakedly and shamefully pandered to racial bigots to snatch the office as Trump did. His broadsides against Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants, blacks and women are almost the stuff of political legend. They need not be repeated here.

Now, here’s what’s telling about his supposed condemnation of hate. He carefully and calculatingly did not utter the words “white” and “nationalists” or “alt-right” in his phony denunciation. He did not call out and lambaste any one organization or leader that precipitated the racial violence in Virginia ― and that included the KKK, which brazenly said it would be there. He was certainly not tongue tied when it came to pillorying Black Lives Matter for their alleged racism and egging on violence against police. Even more telling, he lumped the counter protesters against the white nationalists in the same hate mongering boat together.

Trump deftly sent yet another clear signal that when it comes to stoking racial hate and fomenting racial violence, there’s no difference between a white nationalist true believer and those who stand against what they stand for. Then again, Trump is just following a well-worn template that the GOP has used for ages when it comes to a racist crack, dig, slur, or in this case a racist ― and very violent ― march by white racists.

The ploy goes like this: Issue a pious, indignant statement denouncing the racist quip or act while at the same time being careful not to make any connection between the racist actions and the GOP. During the campaign, for instance, Trump refused at first to reject former Klan Kleagle David Duke’s endorsement, nor any other support from the Klan. But he then proceeded to stare down a supporter wearing a Klan-lettered t-shirt at a campaign rally. Trump was simply following the “shame on you for being an open racist but not the racism” script.

Trump learned from the GOP masters on this score. In 2010, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell flatly refused several direct, angled and nuanced efforts to discuss racism in the Tea Party. McConnell’s none-too-subtle refusal to weigh in on the issue was in direct response to the NAACP’s resolution demanding that the Tea Party speak out ― and speak out loudly ― against the racists among them. Long before the NAACP stirred debate on Tea Party racism with its resolution, a legion of Democrats, civil rights leaders, and even an online petition from an advocacy group, had begged the GOP to speak out against its naked bigots.

No go. The GOP would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism and really meant it. The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, Obama as Joker posters, n-word slurs, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flags waved by some Tea Party activists ― and the deafening silence from GOP leaders during Obama’s early years in office ― was and still very much is an indispensable political necessity for the party.

GOP leaders have long known that blue collar and a significant percent of college-educated, white male voters who are professionals can be easily aroused to vote and shout loudly on the emotional wedge issues: abortion, family values, anti-gay marriage and tax cuts. They whipped up their hysteria and borderline racism against the Affordable Care Act ― and, by extension, Obama. These are the very voters that GOP presidents and aspiring presidents ― Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and George W. Bush, McCain and Romney ― and an endless line of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons have banked on for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance. The GOP banks on them again in 2018 to keep congressional and state offices control.

It’s no coincidence that the “alt-right” and white nationalist movement has become, big, bold, and violent in the last few years. It cut its teeth and honed its attacks on Obama. It then quickly found and latched tightly onto the move by some Southern cities and states to remove the insulting and odious, racist Confederate statutes and monuments and other relics that for a century and a half have rubbed slavery in the face of the nation. Trump is no fool. He knows that politically, the loudmouths who spew “alt-right” garbage have the quiet ear of legions, and those are the exact legions that he and the GOP count as their shock troops to maintain their political edge.